South Africa’s largest chicken producer set to soar

Astral Foods has managed to turn around a weaker first-half performance in its 2025 financial year, with the chicken producer projecting earnings growth of up to 17%.

Astral is the largest integrated poultry producer in the country, known for brands like County Fair, Mountain Valley and Goldi.

The company employs around 12,500 people and has about 37 million birds on farm at any given point in time to supply approximately 5.2 million broilers per week to processing plants.

On Wednesday, 29 October, Astral released a voluntary trading statement outlining its expected earnings for the year through September 2025.

The chicken producer expects its earnings to increase as follows compared to its 2024 financial year –

• Earnings per share – up between 7% and 17%
• Headline earnings per share – up between 5% and 15%

These significant jumps in earnings are thanks to a strong recovery in Astral’s second half, after the first half of its 2025 financial year resulted in weak results driven by lower selling prices and higher input costs.

However, the company managed to turn this around in the second half of the year, supported by an increase in broiler slaughter numbers and higher poultry sales.

These higher production volumes, in turn, led to an improvement in per-unit production costs, further boosted by lower feeding costs.

The group also saw improved poultry sales after an extended period of price deflation, as well as an increase in internal feed sales on the back of higher broiler production numbers.

“Throughout the year, the group remained focused on rebuilding its balance sheet, successfully restoring a targeted surplus cash position,” Astral said.

While Astral’s full-year results will be published on or about Monday, 17 November 2025, this trading statement spells good news for the chicken producer.

It also marks a strong recovery from the many challenges the poultry industry has faced over the past few years.

In 2023, Astral was hard hit by the dual threats of load-shedding and bird flu, which increased costs significantly, causing the producer to make significant losses.

Fortunately, by 2024, Astral had largely recovered. South Africa experienced its longest load-shedding-free period in years, and the bird flu outbreak was contained.

Therefore, the company’s 2024 financial year saw Astral bounce back into a profit of R737 million.

However, the pressure rose again in the first half of the company’s 2025 financial year, when selling price deflation on chicken placed severe pressure on broiler net margins.

The company had attributed this, in part, to a constrained consumer environment and extensive retail promotional activity on frozen chicken, which placed pressure on selling prices.

This, combined with an increase in poultry feed input costs following the 2024 drought and higher local maize prices, saw Astral report far lower earnings for the first half of its 2025 financial year.

Astral was dealt another blow in March 2025, when it experienced a cybersecurity incident. While the group acted swiftly in response, this negatively impacted its poultry division.

The cybersecurity incident led to a downtime in processing and deliveries to customers, resulting in lost revenue and higher costs to catch up the production backlog.

The company said this incident impacted its profits in the first half of the year by around R20 million.

Therefore, the up to 17% growth in earnings expected for the full 2025 financial year reflects a significant turnaround in the year’s second half.